We are young and strange. By tendency, at least, furries are non-conformists with many years ahead of them. That's why the new health care law is a poison pill for our community.

Right now there are people dangling "free" drugs and other medical care in front of us and promising there's no cost; it'll all be paid for by some rich guy. Just let this law stand, they say, and help elect the people who will protect it.

But what are we actually signing away? Our freedom. All of it.

[Ed.: This will be the last story on this topic. A separate piece addresses topic suitability.]

It's time for the Ursa Majors again, and while I like to encourage each to put in their own nominations for the popular furry award, I have decided to share the ones I feel should be looked into as the best entries for the year in the game category and go over briefly why they should be there. Because, without a Pokémon game here, it's going to be a very interesting year.

Everyone else is putting up lists, and if anything it may help furries connect with games they may have not had a chance to play. For other games you can see the recommended list here. I guess I felt like a rebel this year, because four of the five games on my list are not on that one.

So without further ado, here are the five games I am nominating for the Ursa Majors this year, in no particular order. In order to qualify, I feel it should incorporate at least one main character that is anthropomorphic, or cover in some way a world that contains intellectual animals in some degree. You may laugh that I have to define that, but lets not forget what won in 2012 over Dust: An Elysian Tail.

Old-school furry artist Mitch Beiro has been arrested after police found that files depicting the sexual exploitation of minors had been shared online from his home.

Beiro, 47, worked as a guard for a security company in Tucson, Arizona. In the furry fandom, Beiro's artwork has been published in Huzzah, Wild, and several other publications. A frequent attendee of furry conventions, he was a guest of honor at ConFurence 11 (2000), and married Minerva Mink at a joke wedding during ConFurence 12.

Tucson detectives started an investigation on Beiro in December 2011, as part of a wider investigation into the online sharing of child sexual abuse images via peer-to-peer internet networks.

The police served a search warrant on his home on October 3, and found "various computer related items, which contained thousands of files depicting the sexual exploitation of minors". He is being charged with 15 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.

During the investigation, detectives also found that he was part of an unreported child molestation case in California.

Update (19 Feb): Mitch has been sentenced to prison and probation

Fur Affinity is suffering from another round of staff resignations. This time the damage mostly occurred in the forums after one of the art site's disgruntled moderators, Renashe, left and leaked conversations and information which revealed a tool which moderators could use to search for their names in comment sections on the website, among other items.

Following the suspension of Renashe, Kalmor, a moderator on the Fur Affinity Forum followed suit. They wrote a resignation journal which was promptly removed by staff. Afterwords Kalmor posted about the incident on the forums and linked to his twitter at which time he was permanently suspended from the forums and main site for violating the 'privacy' or Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). An agreement that most of the Forum staff never signed in the first place, according to Kalmor.

Following Kalmor's suspension three other staffers left in rapid succession, bringing the staff page down from 10 to 6. The remaining six, according to sources, are mostly not involved it the operations of moderation of the forums. It is certainly a far cry from the site leader page in April this year.

Update (Aug 28) - Fur Affinity Forums host Carenath comes forth to talk about plans for the future.

Update 2 (Aug 31) - The staff page for the Fur Affinity Forums is down from 6 to 1. Carenath replaces the six originally listed.

Update 3 (Sep 5) - A poll has been posted with new name proposals.

Update 4 (Sep 13) - Fur Affinity no longer has a forum, the newly-named Phoenix Forums are now fully independent. Links have been updated.

Update 5 (Sep 22) - IMVU has allegedly issued a cease-and-desist order against Phoenix Forums, which was taken offline for several days.

Update 6 (Sep 24) - Former host Carenath claims FA, IMVU staff pressed for database transfer, deletion on data protection grounds.